More of what I've been up to

Soon after writing my February goals I decided they just didn't appeal to me any more. And I needed something new to do during Joseph's naps. I decided to do one EQ lesson per nap. Well, in no time at all was I totally addicted, and spent almost every waking moment at the beginning of February playing with EQ and working through the lessons in both the User Manual and EQ6 Simplified.

I loaded the second of three postage stamp quilts onto the longarm near the end of the second week of February. I did about four rows of a simple pantograph before going to bed that night. I didn't get back to it the next day - Valentine's Day - because I drove up to Longview in the morning to my favorite shop - Momma Made It - for the start of their Jo's Little Women's Club. I've been collecting the Little Women's Club patterns since the beginning, and was thrilled that a local shop finally decided to offer the club. Then in the afternoon we all loaded into the CRV and headed south for Sophie's second birthday celebration .

The next day - Sunday - I got sick with a bad virus. I talked to Rebecca and she was sick also. I'm pretty sure we got it from Joseph - who was sick only 3 days. That was over 2 weeks ago now, and neither of us are completely well. Rick got sick about 3 days later, and Fred managed to fight it off until last week. This was a bad virus - absenteeism was over 40% for over a week in several of the local school districts. Some grade schools in Vancouver had absenteeism reaching almost 60%. I know we got our flu shots in the fall - as did many others - but this obviously was something not covered by the vaccine.

So . . . for two weeks I didn't do much other than sit in a chair and do handwork. Funny - most of what I finished had been January goals that I'd not finished that I decided not to list for February. Last weekend I managed to finish quilting and bind the postage stamp quilt so I had one finish to list for February. I've also included a picture of the back, so you can see how my "self-constructed backing fabric" turned out. I'm quite pleased with the results. This will go to guild on Thursday for Hotel Hope.

In the next post I will talk about the applique I finished.